Daily Archives: October 3, 2009

One of the most beautiful trees I have ever seen is the royal poinciana. This tree is a native of Madagascar and is widely cultivated in the subtropical climate of south Florida. Generally, they are blooming profusely along about May of each year, but some of them are still blooming long after that, into the summer months. This one was captured in May of 2007, when my friends and I rented a boat and ran it out to Cabbage Key, a small vacation island that is part of the Lee Island Coast. I thought the color was especially striking and could not resist snapping away at it. The royal poinciana blooms in colors ranging from yellow through orange and into red. The green feathery foliage makes it doubly ornamental.

According to Wikipedia, there are lots of nicknames for the royal poinciana. It differs from country to country. But the name I like best is the one that the Vietnamese have given to this tree – the phoenix tail. There are two reasons I like “the phoenix tail” best. I like the concept of infinite opportunities for transformation, and it reminds me of Fawkes, the phoenix who lives with Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter stories.

Of all the exotic creatures discovered by explorers when they first set foot on Captiva Island, there is none more respected and feared than the dread jackalope. Entire ships full of pirates and other scalawags were brought down by the resident herd, making it difficult to transform Captiva into a proper pirate hangout. This is why the jackalope was hunted nearly to extinction, and why in later years, a permit was necessary to hunt them. Here we see one of the last known specimens of the dread jackalope, stuffed and mounted, hanging over the bar at Captiva’s Mucky Duck restaurant.